Page 9 of It's Always Been You
I’ve always loved a challenge.
“There you fucking are,” I crow, shoving aside a sweater, a pair of pants, a two years out of date copy of Purdon’s Pennsylvania Statutes, three bags of black licorice, and, inexplicably, a red lace bra to grab the pink two inch binder with the puffy painted cover.
I’m a little extra and puffy paint is my jam. Sometimes I think I was born too late. I would have killed as an eighties kid.
Thrilled at the prospect of another round of wedding shenanigans, I’m out of my office like a shot.
“I found it!” I call, thundering down the stairs. “We can start…”
My words die on my lips, and I come to a screeching halt halfway down the staircase.
It’s his scent that hits me first. Ocean and pine. In all the years we spent together, I could never figure out how he smelled like the ocean when he spent his entire life in Northern California, nowhere near the beach. It was part of his magic. I understand olfactory memory from a theoretical standpoint, but in this moment, I comprehend it on a cellular level as my entire body reacts to the scent of him.
The memories come at me in flashes. Walking the Berkeley campus tucked under this strong arm. Him grinning at me as he carved our initials into our favorite campus Redwood tree. Late nights watching him work in the robotics lab—God, I fucking loved watching him work, those long fingers racing across a keyboard or building something only his genius tech brain could comprehend. Binge watching the Marvel Cinematic Universe late at night when the rest of the world was sleeping. Curled up together, watching the Northern Lights. His arms around me, secure in the belief that we were forever. His eyes when he watched me dance.
The same eyes that stare up at me now.
I grab the banister with one hand, holding it as tightly as I can to keep my hand from shaking. I bring the binder up to my chest like a shield.
My heart knocks against my ribs, and my lungs struggle to take in air.
Because standing just outside the front door is the only man to ever own my heart. And the only man to break it. Julie and Asher stand in front of him, but I can see the way his blue sweater hugs his muscles and the light shadow of stubble across his jaw. It’s been ten years since I last saw him, but I know his body like my own. My subconscious has conjured it more times than I can count. But I’m not sleeping, and this is not a dream.
“Gabe?” My voice is quiet and shaky, and I hate that. I’ve thought of a hundred different ways it would go when I saw him for the first time after all these years, and none of them involve anything but me, incandescent with rage, telling him exactly what I think about him waltzing back into my life. And the way he left it.
But I don’t feel rage. I feel sadness and grief so deep it’s like it’s been living in my bones for a decade, waiting for its moment to resurface.
Gabe looks up at me with a soft smile. His eyes swirl with emotions that have my stomach sinking straight to my toes. When he speaks, his voice is raspy and deep, and his words are bathed in feeling.
“Hey, Rory.”
My old nickname on his lips is a punch to the gut.
I want Gabe out of my office, and I never want him to leave again. I want to shove him out the door, and I want to throw myself at him and never let him go. I want to fall apart into a million pieces, and I want to stand strong, never letting him see me crumble.
Every one of my muscles tenses, bracing as if expecting a blow. But my fingers also twitch with the need to touch him, and my feet shuffle on the stairs as if my body senses him and still needs to be wherever he is.
And fuck if I know what to do about that.
I don’t know what expression is on my face right now, but it must be bad because I have never seen six people move so fast.
Julie takes a step closer to Gabe in the doorway while Hallie and Emma move to flank her. Ben, Jeremy, and Asher are up the stairs in a flash. Ben and Asher stand on the step below me, arms crossed like bodyguards, while Jeremy stands next to me, his hand on my shoulder, squeezing lightly in a gesture of support that has emotion bubbling up in my chest.
“It’ll be okay, Mol. Ems will know what to do.”
His quiet words of assurance and Ben and Asher’s protective stances, when none of them have any clue what’s going on, have tears burning behind my eyes. But I will them away because I’ll be goddamned if Gabriel Sullivan sees me cry.
Just as Jeremy predicted, Emma looks up at me and our eyes lock. She studies me for a beat and then she nods slightly, reading me in that spooky way of hers before she turns back to the door. Her voice is kind with an undercurrent of steel.
“I’m sorry, but none of us are available right now. You’ll need to call and make an appointment.”
Gabe’s shoulders straighten in determination. I’m fascinated in a kind of detached way by how I know all his tells, even after a decade away. He sticks out his hand to Emma.
“I’m sorry, I probably should have introduced myself. I’m?—”
“We know who you are,” Julie says cooly, ignoring his outstretched hand.
“Take him down, Juliette,” Asher murmurs from his perch in front of me. I smile despite myself, amused, as always, by the awe in his voice when he talks about his wife.
